Breaking: Guillermo del Toro Is Not Mitt Romney

Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro hasn't been shy about his mixed feelings regarding 3D—which made the news that next summer's giant-monsters-smashing-shit blockbuster Pacific Rim, del Toro's first film since 2008's Hellboy II, was going to be post-converted into 3D somewhat troubling. Over on Shock Till You Drop, del Toro talks about the studio's decision to convert the film following what was, by most accounts, a pretty impressive Comic-Con presentation.

Realistically, Warner Bros. was always going to force Pacific Rim into 3D, regardless of del Toro's wishes. Studios are reeling from huge drops in box office revenue, and making people cough up a few more bucks for 3D is... well, it's certainly one way to make more money. Making better movies might be a better long-term plan? BUT I DIGRESS. Sounds like del Toro threw his weight around a bit, so at least this conversion won't be as crappy as most:

In the weeks and months following Comic-Con, what I asked from the studio was to agree to four points that I wanted to do. The more the ILM shots arrived, the more I realized that there were only a few shots that would miniaturize. I asked the studio, number one, that we would not hyper-stereo-lize the thing. That we would not force 3D on the beauty shots. That we would keep the giant dimensions. They agreed. Number two, they agreed to something very unusual. Normally a conversion takes a few weeks. I asked to start it immediately so we could take the full 40 weeks to do the conversion. As an example, Titanic took about 50 weeks to convert. The final thing that I asked that they agreed to, which was amazing, was that I asked them to give me an extra budget, which is considerable, to actually have ILM composite the shots that are CG native 3D. We're not giving elements. ILM is giving the composite in 3D from the get-go. That's a huge, huge element. Now I'm going to be involved in supervising it. What can I tell you? I changed my mind. I'm not running for office. I can do a Romney.